this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2023
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Lemmy

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Everything about Lemmy; bugs, gripes, praises, and advocacy.

For discussion about the lemmy.ml instance, go to !meta@lemmy.ml.

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[–] Boforn@lemmy.ml 39 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Well, this is just weird. When I was migrating from Reddit to this fediverse world I chose .ml and thought it was short for "machine learning" which seemed as a cool domain for me at the time.

[–] humanreader@infosec.pub 48 points 1 year ago (5 children)

FYI, two letter TLDs are country/region/jurisdiction specific. There's an ISO standard for that.

  • .tv Tuvalu
  • .me Montenegro
  • .fm (Federation of) Micronesia

Some countries append additional modifiers to classify their uses:

  • .uk United Kingdom
  • .co.uk Company
  • ...

Three or more are generic (traditional or new)

  • .com, .net, .org, ...

In some cases, Uncle Sam said "first!" and it stuck.

  • .edu Education (MURICA)
  • .mil Military (MURRICA)
  • .gov Government (MURRRICA)

Just like what happens with Mali, what some silicon valley hipsters decide as a 'fun' acronym is just that, a fun thought. If the corresponding government decides to take away a specific domain, they probably can.

[–] CylonBunny@lemmy.world 25 points 1 year ago (3 children)

.mil Military (MURRICA)

That is what made this whole .ml problem. Some people have apparently accidentally leaked American state secrets to Mali by typo.

[–] FlexibleToast@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

That's a poor excuse. If something is secret or higher it has a different TLD. The SIPRnet uses .smil for example. There are also tools at the boundaries that don't allow going from SIPR to NIPR unless they meet specific criteria. Basically you can only leak those secrets accidentally if they were already on a system they shouldn't have been on.

[–] AlexWIWA@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

Additionally, competent IT would make this fuck up impossible. I'm shocked that they didn't whitelist TLDs and block all others.

[–] ikidd@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Classified and top are in a separate system that can't leak.

[–] teolan@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)
  • .edu Education (MURICA)

.edu is not only american. For example I know many schools in France have .edu domains and emails, and I believe it's the case in many more countries.

[–] yetAnotherUser@feddit.de 17 points 1 year ago (1 children)

In 2001 it was limited to US educational institutions only, all registrations prior were grandfathered in.

Although I haven't got a clue why my non-US university, founded in 2009, has a .edu domain.

[–] teolan@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I did not know that. That's not cool

[–] livus@kbin.social 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Pretty sure most countries use .ac for universities. Ac.uk, ac.au, ac.nz are all standard.

[–] billstickers@aussie.zone 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Australia doesn’t. We’re all .edu.au

Edit: here is the list of who uses it. Stands for academia if it wasn’t self evident to anyone else either.

2nd edit: having trouble with escaping characters in the link so it’s defaulting to the ac page when it should be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.ac_(second-level_domain)

[–] livus@kbin.social 1 points 1 year ago

Sorry, remembered wrong.

Stands to reason, you guys like .com.au instead of .co.wherever as well.

[–] SheeEttin@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago

And io belongs to the British Indian Ocean Territory.

There are thousands of gTLDs now, though. But most of them are brand names.

https://www.iana.org/domains/root/db

[–] Boforn@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago

Thanks for the clarification. If this instance goes down please someone start an ''lemmy.ai'' instance. I want to follow the same logic that I went with since the beginning.

[–] Blaze@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] chris@l.roofo.cc 23 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That's a generic top-level domain. It is not associated with any country. It belongs to "Identity Digital Inc.".

[–] Blaze@sh.itjust.works 7 points 1 year ago

Interesting, thanks

[–] livus@kbin.social 36 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

No, it's Mali.

The rumour is that lemmy devs chose it to mean "marxist leninist" but I think it's more likely they wanted a free domain name.

[–] gary_host_laptop@lemmy.ml 40 points 1 year ago (3 children)

The rumor is fake, the devs have said it multiple times. If they would have wanted to do some funny Marxism meme they would have used .su

[–] bdonvr@thelemmy.club 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Maybe they didn't choose it for that, but to be fair they are definitely and admittedly Marxist-Leninists

[–] gary_host_laptop@lemmy.ml 24 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes, as there are plenty of other developers who are openly liberals or some other flavour of capitalism. You don't need to agree with the developers political choices all the time to use their software.

[–] bdonvr@thelemmy.club 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Right. My statement was one of fact, not trying to say it's a bad thing. I'm a Marxist-Leninist as well.

[–] gary_host_laptop@lemmy.ml 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hello there comrade! Nice to have you here!

[–] Fenzik@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 year ago

This was a lovely exchange comrades

[–] Pili@lemmy.ml -2 points 1 year ago

Yeah they are, so if they did choose .ml for that reason they would have no problem admitting it also. So it's pretty clear that they just wanted a free domain.

[–] meldrik@lemmy.wtf 5 points 1 year ago

SU = Soviet Union

[–] emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Don't you need to be a citizen of a CIS nation to get a .su domain?

[–] gary_host_laptop@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 year ago

It depends on the registrar.